Monday, April 16, 2012

Thom Hartmann: The Buffett rule will get a vote in the Senate today...

- but it likely won't be able to overcome a unified Republican filibuster. President Obama's proposal would force millionaires and billionaires like Warren Buffet and Mitt Romney to pay at least the same tax rate as working Americans. Currently - America's super rich take advantage of loopholes created by the Bush tax cuts - and pay far lower rates than even a lot of middle class Americans.

Making the rich pay their fair share in taxes has been a rallying call by both Democratic and Republican Presidents in history - from Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan to now Barack Obama. Unfortunately - now that the rules of the Senate have been changed by the Republican minority to require 60-votes to pass anything - and now that the most-corporate friendly House of Representatives elected by over $300 million in corporate spending in 2010 - refuses to consider any sort of tax increases because multi-millionaire lobbyist Grover Norquist won't let them - then it looks like America's oligarchs will be let off the hook again.

Republicans are more focused on a $600,000 GSA scandal and whether or not Secret Service Agents cavorted with prostitutes, than actually making our economy work for the middle class again.